“If I had to guess it would be Saturday against Charlotte,’’ Williams said before Wednesday night’s game against the Orlando Magic. “A lot of that is me, and we want to make sure that we bring him back when he’s in a lot better shape. He’s spent so much time rehabbing and getting his quad stronger, but we have to make sure he’s in a good place before he comes back.’’

Gordon has been out all of this season rehabbing his knee injury, one that caused him to miss all but 10 games of last season as well. Since coming to New Orleans as the key piece in the trade that sent Chris Paul out Gordon has done little on the court — but he did sign a max offer sheet with Phoenix while saying that was where his heart really was.

He’s got a lot of work to do to repair his relationship with the New Orleans fans — fans don’t care much for the business side of sports and why Gordon said what he did. How he does that is go out, play hard and play well. He was seen as a key part of the Clippers future, the best young two guard in the game before his injury. He needs to play like that again.

If he does, New Orleans has a bright future. We will see what happens… starting Saturday. Maybe.

That’s a fine sentiment. Saying it publicly is another matter. Not even Harden did that a couple years ago. He was recorded during a pregame team huddle.

There’s a fine line between self-fulfilling confidence and providing bulletin-board material to the opponent. There’s already some animosity between the teams stemming from the Stephen Curry-Harden MVP race in 2015, and it has bubbled since. No matter how harmless Capela’s remark might have been intended to be, it’ll be met contentiously in the Bay Area.

Oklahoma City traded for Victor Oladipo out of Orlando to be their third scorer, behind Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. It didn’t exactly work out that way, Durant bolted town and when Westbrook went off Oladipo was looking for a place to fit in.

That place turned out to be the Pacers.

Oladipo has been playing like an All-Star this season with Indiana, and last week he was key in snapping Cleveland’s 13 game win streak, then turned around and dropped 47 points on Denver. For the week he averaged 35.7 points a game, shot 45.7 percent from three, plus grabbed 7.7 rebounds per game.